Tag Archive: fall

Admit it. We all do it, it’s why we suffer through five or so months of blizzards and freezing cold and then mud season and pot hole hell – the leaves ignite themselves in a final blaze of glory, a testament to the last hurrah before they subside into their survival mode for the winter. It’s when we can take pride in the New England we call home and breath deep. That full bellied inhalation fills our lungs with a smell, atmosphere, and feeling that only fall can produce. It hints at the days to come, while carrying the last dying scents of summer along the current of change. We complain about the “busy buddies” with nothing to do, who travel from many a mile to see the leaves, slowing down to thirty in a fifty five and slamming on the brakes whenever they see a flash of red or gold. True, they can make a drive to and back from work suicidal at best sometimes and we can wonder at their apparent lack of concern for the angry drivers that are forced to creep along behind them, but we would be lying if we didn’t say we know why they do it. It is a beautiful time of year, one we sometimes forget in the mad rush to prepare for winter and our chastising about all we failed to get done during the summer. The “leaf peepers” remind us to stop and take a look at our surroundings, stop bitching about our lots in life, and realize that at least one of Vermont’s seasons still captivates our attention.

Fall in Vermont is like a wakeup call before the frost of wondering why we stick around. It’s a good reminder of a certain crossroads point we all reach in our lives. Fall reminds me that there is moments of light and flashes of color in times of gray and cold wandering. I have realized that we all reach segments in our lives were we have flat stretches of life that do not jive with where we want to be. It’s not a bad thing per say, it just is what it is. We don’t have to like it or want to do it, but for the moment, we need to do it. That’s my realization or the week (or month maybe). I am at one of those points in my life where I have no desire to be where I am, struggling to just make some ends meet so that I can get to another point in my life that will be a want, not just a need. On the other hand, I’m trying not put off life. I’ve done that before, multiple times. I’m still learning to avoid this dangerous path in life, but I know I will continue to stray when things get tough. Still, I am also not fooling myself into thinking that I will be stuck in this rut forever. It’s a short term part of my life that is based on what has to be done in order to get to those juicier bits of what it means to keep going. Goals help a great deal in my opinion. Right now, I am saving the money I am making right now to hopefully buy me some more reliable transportation and if my dreams can come true, I am vying for a Mini Cooper. I have always wanted one and this is just the motivation I need to get there. With that Mini, I am hoping upon hope to reach my ultimate goal: if I can survive things as they are until May of 2012, I plan to travel across the American Mid West. It’s a dream, but a doable one that I am planning to stick to. Right now, it’s what’s getting me through and probably what will continue to do so for the next few months.

Vermont Fall

Welcoming a New Life:

It’s an easy thing for me to get all wrapped up in my little existence and forget about all the other things and people out there that have their own takes on life. One great reminder is in the welcoming of a new life. My sister’s boyfriend’s sister had her baby a week early, Friday October 14th, weighing in at 4 lbs and 11 ounces. Now, I am not one to think that all babies are cute, quite the opposite really, but I have to say that she is absolutely beautiful! Holding her while she was quietly dreaming, comfortably wrapped in her blanket and surrounded by people that love her so much, it adds a good dash of perspective to what’s really important. I wish her all the luck in this scary and brand new world and I hope that the hardships she will come to face will only serve to make her stronger and ready to take on anything that life throws at her. She has plenty of people looking out for her along the way and I guess that’s a good enough reason for me to keep finding ways of outrunning life’s little speed bumps. It has and always will be the little things in life and as long as I can keep reminding myself that they are out there if I only look hard enough for them, each day will get a bit brighter than the next.

The Fall Foliage Concert on Saturday night was quite a success! Everyone sounded amazing and we had a big crowd. I

Hell, yes GMC can sing!

think everyone was up for an evening out with good music, not to mention it being friends and family weekend. I was so happy that two of their final songs included The

Welsh Heritage....

Lord is My Shepherd from BBC‘s The Vicar of Dibley show and When I’m Sixty-four by the Beatles. Then the choir director pulled out one of his gifts from Wales, which turned out to be a cowboy hat with the Welsh flag and dragon on it – it definitely made my evening 🙂

Sunday morning was spent hulking over a few mounds of homework, which is nothing new, except it was a little more desperate by now. You see, I usually hit this wall – it’s usually the four-month wall. It’s when I suddenly find that I can’t even pick up a text-book because I’ve realized I have no idea why I am working so hard to achieve a piece of paper. This semester, I hit that wall in the fourth week – not such a good sign. Alas, life goes on and so too shall I.

Sunday was also another first. For the first time in my life, I went kayaking. I know, how strange is that? But it’s the truth. I’ve been in a canoe, and ridden in a kayak once, but I’ve never really gone kayaking before. It was a beautiful day to be out on Lake St. Catherine with all the fall colors and a good friend. I can now cross something else of my “still to do” list.

Monday: Had an exam in my Introduction to Sociology class and my case study presentation in Human Ecology. Check out my Powerpoint for the class!

*sigh* Well, I survived Monday and in my book, if you can do that, there’s a good chance that the rest of the week will be slightly less painful! Here’s hopin’….

Standardized testing – it really makes you not want to think. The more you think about it and its implications, the more you want to draw back from it, reject it and shout “I’m an individual who wants to learn, not cram and forget!” at the top of your lungs. But you don’t – you sit there and stare at that piece of paper as all the definitions and identification terms swirl in your head from hours of memorization and glance up at the clock wondering how you are supposed to do what is asked in the time allotted. That’s another portion of my education – learning about the social cues that we tend not to deviate from.

More on that later I think……

This weekend is going to be a little stressful, but nothing I can’t handle. Saturday night is the Fall foliage concert on campus and I’ve been asked to usher. It will be nice to work in the theatre again for a little bit, plus I haven’t seen the choir since most of its members graduated last spring. New blood, new rhythms 🙂

On a home front note, the remaining guinea hens are all grown up and funny as hell. Ah, I guess I should expand on

Porch Pets

that (unless I already have – in that case, forgive me for repeating myself). We lost six of them a while back….we don’t know to what, but it was probably coyotes or foxes. So much for all the effort we put into raising 15 of them. Now we are down to a stable (hopefully) eight. They are quite friendly which is

Eight little guinea's, all in a line....

nice, except that it also acts as a downside – they are completely comfortable around our cats, cars, and dogs in general, which means having them guard duty pets went down the drain. Oh well. It’s kind of nice for the most part – they have now taken to roosting on our porch sometimes, which is fun to see when you come home. Eight funny looking birds (they look like miniature turkeys now) sitting on your railing squawking to themselves…..you can’t help but laugh.

I’ve been trying to take more pictures of my college campus these days. In the four years that I have been year, I didn’t take a single photo. Now, I’m trying to make up for it in two semesters! Most of my pictures are just scenery though, trying to catch the fall foliage before it disappears.

Don't you wish you were here?

It’s friends and family weekend at GMC, which is always fun. I don’t attend any of the

Aren't they cute? Of course, they are our farm's home grown meat source....

events, nor is it really special to me in particular, as my family works at the college five days a week. But it’s fun to see students you have known for years showing their parents around the campus. In a way, they revert back to a younger self, and it’s always fun to see who belongs to whom (have you ever been friends with someone for a long time and then seen there parents and realized they look nothing alike? Or just the opposite sometimes…).

Unfortunately, I have hit the proverbial wall of denial in my school work. It happens to everyone, it’s just that usually I don’t manage to run head first into it until the second or third month, not the fourth week! Not much I can do about it except keep my head up and wait it out ’til I reach the other side!

In the mean time, I’ve got exams to study for and papers/presentations to finish. More hopefully this weekend….